Your stylus arguably has the toughest and most involved job of all your turntable parts. Besides being on the frontlines against dust and debris, hour upon hour of contact through the course of playback toll on your stylus, even if it is a diamond. You could also be damaging your records by having a worn needle gouging micro-chips, or bearing heavily against grooves. A several misshapen stylus could even start carving into your vinyl. This is first evident on more difficult to track passages, such as when a female vocalist its a not really hard or gets a bit too close to the microphone.
When you start to notice this sort of change, and cleaning the stylus does not cure the problem, it is time for a replacement. It is NOT the case that slight, occasional mis-tracking from wear will ruin the record; records are not as delicate as some would make them out to be. There is no really good way to determine the extent of wear other than listening for it. Visual inspection is nearly impossible to do right; often a visual check will not show wear or other problems that are quite evident from just listening.
It depends on the stylus profile: Conical has very short life up to hrs, MicroRidge has the longes life up to hrs! I see ads for used cartridges stating that its barely broken in at hours This is not true, even for Elliptical stylus is almost half life! Some of his vintage carts are already worn out and inspection by SoundSmith or any other Re-tipper is a must have!
Especially if one particular sample does not sound as good as another newer sample of the same cart. The elliptical and conical styluses were so worn that after just one play the damage was done. He only recently discovered what he had done by listening to a new Clearaudio Goldfinger and then hearing the damage! Shame that somebody had strongly recommended the older cartridges and he followed their adviceblindly. Agree with chakster. Different stylus profiles have different lifespans.
Also, the construction quality of a stylus can impact lifespan crystal structure alignment. This increases lifespan. A conical cartridge profile has a very small contact area, actually just a point of contact. These wear very quickly.
Just because some damage might be done to a record due to a worn conical stylus does NOT mean that your records are totally ruined and unplayable. A new cartridge using a very small line contact stylus or a cart rebuilt by Soundsmith or others using a very small line contact stylus will be tracing the record groove in a different area, typically tracking MUCH DEEPER in the groove.
This area may not have been damaged. May not have ever even been touched by a stylus. When playing some of my collection that was damaged in the early 80s by a worn Shure conical stylus came out clean sounding and like new. No audible damage or distortion. The stylus was obviously tracking a "virgin" part of the groove. Once the groove is damaged, that is going to severely impact the SQ of the record, period.
Just because your stylus is tracking a slightly different section of the groove Then microline styli can go even further. It is possible to trace a different part of the groove and mitigate at least some groove damage; I've heard this myself. When a record is damaged by mis-tracking or a bad stylus, chunks of vinyl are removed so that the wall becomes pitted, it is possible to avoid these pits by contacting the groove above and below that area. When a record is played, the stylus deforms the groove slightly, but because vinyl is highly elastic, it snaps back to its original shape.
The pits will affect how the groove deforms, so even though a different stylus might not be tracing the pits, the absence of vinyl will affect how the groove deforms, so, in that sense, the pitting cannot be totally avoided unless one uses a system like the ELP laser table.
I saw a demonstration of that table where a severely worn record was played with the laser focused at different groove depth--when the laser avoided the damaged part of the groove the record sounded like it was new.
I know that through our ears and even after 1. Any one decides when to re-tip but maybe is time to think about again. Buy cartridges with Micro Ridge or similar ultra high-end needles to use them for hours without retiping them. Any stylus can be damaged and worn in far less time, depending on whether the arm is adjusted correctly, the overall treatment of the cartridge, and most importantly- the condition of the vinyl that is being utilized.
A record that is full of pits and has dirty grooves will wear down any cartridge in a much quicker time. Some cartridges may last even longer than hours Stylus shape is no guarantee of long wear.
Well, i am not afraid of used vinyl and my interest is original pressings from the 70's. A few quick maths, say you play your table for about 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. Thats about 32 12" albums a week. Your cartridge would still last about a year if you did this week after week.
Even if you had albums in your collection, and played through your entire collection that means it would take about 31 weeks before you finished listening to your entire collection and you had to start over again.
IMO, there's a lot of people who think they play their table a lot, but I also think there's a lot of people who really over estimate how many hours are on their cartridge and end up tossing perfectly good cartridges or styli. Try keeping track for a while. Make a mark on a sheet of paper up by the table each time you put an album on or flip one over.
See how many sides you play on a good week, and how many on a bad week. Over the last or so albums 12" LP I've been keeping track of, each side averages about 19 minutes. Obviously if you mainly play 45 rpms, or 7" or 10", 19 minutes may not apply. Post by JohnMcC » 12 May I've had "proper" hifi for 50 years, though some of the equipment from the s would raise eyebrows now. Eagle Amplifiers? Garrard SP25? Teleton Amplifiers? But I honestly don't think I've ever worn out a stylus. Bent cantilevers - yes; stylus tips knocked off, cartridge bodies cracked from overtightening etc etc.
But worn out? Don't think so. I've always checked stylus condition with a powerful jeweller's loup, and seen quite a few faults, but not noticeable wear. Could it be that more esoteric devices wear more quickly? Post by rubber duck » 12 May kalaur wrote: See how many sides you play on a good week, and how many on a bad week.
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